My Time as a Graduate Student

The Croods…..

by Tina E on December 11, 2012

Disney has always gotten slack for being inaccurate for their renditions of the classic fairy tales, but we have fallen in love with them. Dreamworks has also gone to that level of inaccuracies with their new movie The Croods. This movie is based on a prehistoric family, who are suppose to be Neanderthals…who are knuckle-walkers…..

The Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) were found in Europe and the Middle East, mostly in Europe due to fossil evidence in caves. Dating from 130,000 to about 36,000 years, and are very similar and different than anatomically modern humans. They are: shorter, stockier bodies, more robust, powerful (muscular) build, larger faces, and bigger brains. They also had culture, advanced tools, and also interbreed with archaic Homosapiens. They were fully bipedal, no knuckle-walking. The Homo species, in general, were fully bipedal at this time.

The main female character is Eve – the first biblical female – bipedal as well as a knuckle-walker. But what is accurate to this trailer is the spread of culture and knowledge that has been associated with the Homo erectus and into the Homo sapiens. (this includes Neanderthals). We associate a lot of culture spread with the neanderthals because there is a lot of archaeological fossil evidence that has been found with the species. With the Neanderthals we see a lot of emergence of culture like burials, social groups, shelters, etc… so the trailer (from what I have seen) is accurate in the spread of culture and cultural materials.

But what we have to keep in mind (like with all movies) is that movies are for entertainment and the creators are usually catering to a specific audience. We may not always agree with the movies and we find the flaws, but the general public won’t usually pick up on these inaccuracies.